So as i'm starting to post in this forum i should present me...

I'm a french developper (i'm in the SAP development for my job) since some years ago. And as i think it's not enough to program all the day for my job, i continue to do it for "pleasure" . More seriously i want to make some games for fun so i always search for good tools for it.

So I found Construct in a french board discussion of a PC videogame magazine (free advertising : http://www.canardpc.com/) so i started to play with it.

Hi,

In my mind Construct is very game-oriented so not sure it's the best tool to make desktop application.

BUT as it handle the graphical part of making windows, canvas etc... Sure you can use it for desktop applications (yes I say two different things in two sentences hehe). So i've not seen specific tutorials for applications but you can use the one made for games to have some generic mechanics (see this thread for a lot of examples : http://www.scirra.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=8169).

Make an hello world application is so simple that i think no one has done it (but the ghost shooter tutorial explain how to write texte so). But if you want one :

1) Create a new directx application

2) Right click on the layout and select "Insert an object"

3) Select the text object and add it in the layout

4) Just double click on this text object to edit the content and put "Hello world".

5) Launch the application, it's done.

You can also see some user creations to have examples this one : http://www.scirra.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=8295 is an array editor that can be used for a lot of things and there's a lot of other ones.

I think the most important thing to begin with construct is to understand how works the events, so you have to see the game tutorials for this even if you don't want to make games.

A pretty newbish question, but I don't see any button anywhere or option in the array paste thing to load or add the .map file.

So, how do I do that?

You have an action for array to load it from file (see my .cap thing the event on LoadFile button clicked).

To explain more precisely how to load a map from those kind of file :

1. Declare an array and set his size according to the one stored in the file

2. Use action Array.LoadFile (or something like that, i'm not at home so i can't look in construct).

3. Read the array with a for each element loop for example and replace each value of the array by a sprite or a box or what you want.

In a multi-map/level project you surely want to have more than one map file. So to make it a little more dynamic you should create kind of global hash table or ini file that will store the "meta" information for each map :

• Map1 -> Name = "Bidule" (yes i'm french), width = 2345, Height = 876, mapFile = "bidule.map"
• Map2 -> Name = "City Of The Death", width = 5433, Height = 4567, mapFile = "deathcity.map"

So with this information, when you control where your character go you can retrieve all the information needed to load the map using the same layout (so once this "engine" is done if you want to add new map or level you just have to add a line in the hashtable or ini file and create the corresponding map file). I wish i'm clear as i'm not an expert in english language .

When I change layout size and click "Change layout size" the screen goes black

That's the problem when you put a width or a height lesser than 1024 * 768, i know think i've a solution but i will not be able to change this this week.

sorry for an offtopic but how you made this minimap?

Hi, it's pretty simple with the standard minimap object as you just have to 'plot object to color' for each of the object you want to display in an always event (but maybe you can only do it in a event that will correspond to "one tile is changed").

And yeah i know use boxes is maybe not the best but it's fit my requirement. I was thinking to maybe change it to tiledbackground or sprite but don't have the time for now.

And you're welcome for any remark or improvement ! I still have a lot of things to learn on Construct.

Hum yes, some FTP transfer problem.

CAP is now OK, i reupload also the EXE, it will be finish in some seconds

Good morning everyone,

Here is a simple graphical tool to create simple map by using an array. I made it because i'm planning to make some tiled top-down RPG with differents maps so i needed a tool to generate those maps. For now it's quite simple but maybe i will enhanced it more and more to fit my needs.

It was also for me a first approach to construct possibilities, so maybe it will be useless for most people but not for me .

I would also credit Construct team, linkman2004 for sprite button addon and pulowski that gives me the idea with his Simple Array Editor example.

Features :

• 8 different tiles, each corresponding to one letter
• Save and Load files from disk
• Change Layout size (so array size)

How to use generated file in other construct project :

• You juste have to load the file in an array on read it to replace letters by sprites, boxes, tiled background or anything. The actual limitation is that you need to know the array size before loading the map (maybe there' a way to avoid this, i've to check).

Addon needed to edit the .cap : Sprite Button by linkman2004

Know bug :

• Reduce the layout size at less than 1024 * 768 will cause part of the menu disappear (so the editor becomes broken)

Please enjoy it, you can use it and/or enhance it as you want !

Screen shot link :

http://www.thuwe.net/Construct/MapArrayEditor/MapArrayEditorScreen.png

EXE file :

http://www.thuwe.net/Construct/MapArrayEditor/MapArrayEditor.exe

CAP file :

http://www.thuwe.net/Construct/MapArrayEditor/MapArrayEditor.cap